The Schenley Hotel, located between
Fifth Avenue and Forbes Avenue at the intersection with Bigelow Boulevard,
was built in 1898. The hotel, described as "Pittsburgh's class hotel
of the early 20th Century, was sold to the University of Pittsburgh in 1956.
It is now the school's Student Union building, known as the William Pitt
Union. The building is one of the finest pieces of architecture in the
Oakland area, a landscape dotted with several early 20th Century landmark
structures.

Built on land once owned by Mary
Schenley, the Beaux-Arts skyscraper hotel was the keystone of Franklin
Nicola’s dream of Oakland as a center for culture, art and education.
With help from industrialists Andrew W. Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew
Carnegie, George Westinghouse and H.J. Heinz, Nicola's dream became
a reality, and it began with the Schenley Hotel. Around the hotel, the
University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Institute of Technology, as
well as several other cultural attractions, began to emerge.

The Schenley Hotel was at the heart of
the Oakland district, the hub around which the area grew.

Full of marble, chandeliers and Louis
XV architecture, the Schenley Hotel quickly became Pittsburgh's home to the
great and the near-great. Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt,
William Howard Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower all were guests at the Schenley.
Singer-actress Lillian Russell lived in suite 437 and married Pittsburgh
publisher Alexander Moore in the French Room (now a dining room on the first
floor). Dramatic tenor Enrico Caruso and his entourage occupied seven suites
during their stay. Sarah Bernhardt, Nelson Eddy, Jeannette MacDonald,
Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy all stayed at the
Schenley.

The Schenley Hotel was not just a place
for the rich and famous. It was a popular place for marriages, and a place where
one could dine on the best cuisine of the day. It was also a place where
Pittsburgh power brokers met, and many decisions that left lasting impact
on the growth of the city where made in the decorative halls of the Schenley.
The formation of the United States Steel Corporation was celebrated during the
"Meal of Millionaires" in 1901. Later in 1914, the Veterans of Foreign Wars
(VFW) was organized at the Schenley Hotel.

The Schenley Hotel in 1909 with
the newly constructed Forbes Field in the distance.

The year of 1909 was a time that altered
the future of the Schenley Hotel forever. This was the year
that Forbes Field opened just down the street and the University of Pittsburgh moved from it's Northside location to Oakland.
From that time on, the "Waldorf of Pittsburgh" gradually became the home of
the National League baseball players in town to play the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Now added to the register were names such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Casey Stengel,
Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby. The deals struck over dinner at the Schenley Hotel
Lounge now included baseball trades.

For the next 40-plus years the Schenley
continued to operate, but on a less grand scale. In 1922, an ambitious $7 million
plan was launched to turn the Hotel Schenley into a "galaxy of the finest and
most modern metropolitan structures" by building apartments adjoining the hotel.
In 1924, the new Schenley Apartments, five connecting buildings in a new-type
housing development, were ready for occupancy. Apartments were priced at $150
and up.

The Schenley Hotel and the Schenley
Apartment complex stood at the heart of the Oakland cultural center.

Despite the initial success of the Schenley
Apartments and the tradition of excellence offered at the Schenley Hotel, the
growth of the University of Pittsburgh and the many medical centers in the Oakland
area began to take a toll on the Schenley's business. Pittsburgh's Renaissance I
brought modern hotels to downtown Pittsburgh and, ironically, Frank Nicola’s
dream of an Oakland civic center turned out to be a death knell for the Hotel
Schenley. The turn-of-the-century marvel had been built in rural Pittsburgh, but
the suburban atmosphere soon changed. By the 1950s, the Schenley was surrounded by
hospitals, educational facilities, concert halls and private clubs, with no
additional room for parking to serve the hotel’s mobile guests.

In 1956 the Schenley Apartments became
the Schenley Quadrangle, the University's student dormitory complex.

In 1956, the hotel was sold to the
University of Pittsburgh to serve as a residence hall and it's student union.
The Schenley Apartments were turned into dormitories and the five-building
facility was renamed the Schenley Quadrangle. One million dollars were spent
to renovate the old hotel, which was renamed Schenley Hall. Shortly after this,
during the height of the Cold War in September 1959, the Schenley Hall ballroom
was the site of a luncheon for Nikita Khrushchev, chairman of the Soviet
Union, part of his trans-continental tour.

The Lower Lounge atrium (left) and the
ornate William Pitt Union ballroom.

The former lobby of the Schenley Hotel, now
the Tansky Lounge (left) and Nordy's Place in the basement level.

As the student population of the Pittsburgh
campus grew to in excess of 30,000, it became clear that the grand structure
needed an overhaul. In 1980, Schenley Hall underwent a $13.9 million, 18-month
renovation and restoration project. The upper seven upper floors were transformed
into modern offices for students and the student affairs administration. The tenth
floor, which had been added several years after the hotel was first built, was
removed to relieve stress on the building.

The turn-of-the-century character of
the main floor was revisited through careful restoration of the Louis XV mirrored
ballroom, the lower lounge that had enclosed the original Bigelow Boulevard-side
porch thirteen years after the hotel was originally built, and the marbled-wall
former hotel lobby, now called the Tansky Family Lounge. In addition, the rarely
used basement was transformed into a functional lower level with a new Forbes
Avenue Entrance and plaza. The original wooden hotel room doors salvaged from the
upstairs renovation were used for the walls of the lower level student recreation
room, now called "Nordy's Place". The renovations were completed in 1983 and the
building was renamed the William Pitt Union.

The Panther in the William Pitt
Union's Tansky Lounge.

The Schenley Hotel, now over 110-plus
years old, is as it was when it was first built, one of the centerpiece attractions
of the Oakland area. Although the clientele may have changed from Pittsburgh's
upper class citizens to the University of Pittsburgh's student population, the
venerable building still serves it's purpose as the hub around which the Oakland
area revolves.